Ancient and modern pronunciations — страница 10

situation. Examples include “Most of the comparatives were right, but you made two mistakes” and “Three words are in the wrong position in the sentence/ are mixed up”. Make sure you only use this method when students can remember what you are referring to without too much prompting. Other useful language: “Very good, but you made just one mistake with the passive” (For a tongue twister) “Good attempt/ Getting better, but in two places you said /sh/ where it should have been /s/. Can you guess which words?” 8. Use grammatical terminology to identify the mistake For example, “(You used) the wrong tense”, “Not the Present Perfect”, “You need an adverb, not an adjective” or “Can change that into the passive/ indirect speech?” This method is perhaps

overused, and you need to be sure that the grammatical terminology isn’t just going to confuse them more. Other useful language: “Because that is the present simple, you need to add the auxiliary (verb) ‘do’” “Say the same sentence, but with the comparative form” 9. Give the rule For example, “‘Since’ usually takes the Present Perfect” or “One syllable adjectives make the comparative with –er, not more + adjective” This works best if they already know the rule, and you at least need to make sure that they will quickly understand what you are saying, for example by only using grammatical terminology you have used with them several times before. 10. Give a number of points This is probably best saved for part of a game, especially one where students work

together, but you can give each response a number of points out of 10. The same or other teams can then make another attempt at saying the same thing to see if they can get more points. If you don’t want students to focus on accuracy too much, tell them that the points will also give them credit for good pronunciation, fluency, politeness, persuasiveness and/ or originality of ideas. Useful language: “Very good fluency and very interesting, but a few basic mistakes, so I’ll give your team a score of (IELTS) 5.5. Practice your script in your team again for 5 minutes and we’ll try it one more time” “You got all the articles right this time, so I’ll give you 9 out of 10” 11. Just tell them they are wrong (but nicely) Positive ways of being negative include “nearly

there”, “getting closer”, “just one mistake”, “much better”, “good idea, but…”,”I understand what you mean but…”, “you have made a mistake that almost everyone does/ that’s a very common mistake”, “we haven’t studied this yet, but…” and “much better pronunciation, but…” With lower level and new classes, you might have to balance the need to be nice with the need to be clear and not confuse them with feedback language that they don’t understand, perhaps by sticking to one or two phrases to give feedback for the first couple of months. It can also be useful to give them translations of this and other classroom language you will use, for example on a worksheet or a poster. 12. Tell them what part they should change For example, “You

need to change the introduction to your presentation” or “Try replacing the third word with something else”. 13. Ask partners to spot errors This is a fairly well-known way of giving feedback in speaking tasks, but it can be a minefield if the person giving feedback has no confidence in their ability to do so or in how well the feedback (i.e. criticism) will be taken, and even more so if the person receiving the feedback will in fact react badly. This method is easier to do and easier to take when they have been told specifically which language to use while speaking and so to look out for when listening, usually meaning controlled speaking practice tasks. The feedback can be made even simpler to give and collect and more neutral with some careful planning, e.g. asking them

count how many times their partner uses the target form as well as or instead of looking for when it used incorrectly. 14. Try again! Sometimes, students don’t need much help at all but just a chance to do it again. This is likely to be true if you have trained them well in spotting their own errors, if there was some other kind of mental load such as a puzzle to solve that was distracting them from the language, or if they have had a chance to hear someone else doing the same speaking task in the class or on a recording. Useful language: “One more time (but think about the grammar more this time/ but concentrating on making less mistakes instead of speaking quickly)” “Give it another go” “Do you want one more chance before you get the final score”. 15. Remind them